


you're my wonderwall

by thehaakun



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/F, Modern AU, Renault car commercial AU LOL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 13:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21429184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehaakun/pseuds/thehaakun
Summary: Some had told Edelgard she was lucky, to have a house by the beach, but being lonely meant her only companion had been the rising sun and the waxing moon, but now she had a star by her side.That’s what Byleth became to her, over that summer. Like a comet, her eyes as blue as its blazing tail, Byleth lit up Edelgard’s lonesome days.---[F!Byleth/Edelgard] Mixtapes tie them together, from childhood, to adulthood.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 16
Kudos: 217





	you're my wonderwall

**Author's Note:**

> broke: that one lesbian renault car commercial au  
woke: knowing that edeleth would probably drive SUBARU the ULTIMATE lesbian VEHICLE
> 
> anyway, if you haven't seen the Lesbian renault car commercial au it's this llmaoo: https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1193987805984231425  
(I took the liberty of making some changes from this commercial it's not the exact same in this AU lol)
> 
> I'm a sucker for childhood friends to lovers AND i'm a sucker for modern aus AND i'm a sucker for when there's that 90s teenage movie aesthetic of mixtapes, stereos, and old beatup cars. thanks for coming and listening to wonderwall

When they first meet, it’s when Byleth’s father brings his daughter with him on a business trip to talk with a very important businessman. That’s when Edelgard meets Byleth, the two of them small enough still they’re only as tall as Jeralt’s hip. One thing leads to another, and the two men put their daughters in the backseat of their car, then as they chat in the front, the two girls sit in the back. 

There’s a little silence between them, they’ve only just met after all.

Edelgard’s staring out the open window, wind fanning her brunette hair when she feels a little nudge at her arm, and it’s Byleth looking at her, a little cassette tape in her hand. Out of her backpack, Byleth pulls out a little Walkman and a pair of earphones.

Byleth doesn’t say anything as she puts the cassette into the Walkman -- the wind blowing into the car does stifle sound a little, and with their fathers talking loudly in the front seats -- but she holds out one of the earbuds of her earphones.

It’s a questioning look in Byleth’s eyes, and Edelgard swallows. She doesn’t know why, but she reaches a hand out and takes the earbud, their fingers brushing. It’s not like they have anything better to do while they’re in the car.

So for the rest of the car trip, Edelgard and Byleth listen to Byleth’s mixtape, a surprising list of acoustic tunes and soft pianos. Edelgard thinks she likes it.

\---

That wouldn’t be the last time they share something together. There were other firsts, too.

The business trip goes on for a little longer than expected, and Edelgard’s father allows Jeralt and his daughter to stay over in the meanwhile.

Most of Edelgard’s siblings are old enough to be out on their own, doing business, so Edelgard had become used to being alone -- until that summer, when Byleth stays with her. Some had told Edelgard she was lucky, to have a house by the beach, but being lonely meant her only companion had been the rising sun and the waxing moon, but now she had a star by her side.

That’s what Byleth became to her, over that summer. Like a comet, her eyes as blue as its blazing tail, Byleth lights up Edelgard’s lonesome days.

When Edelgard learns that Byleth has never been to the beach before, that’s the first place they go, and Edelgard tells Byleth all of her unnecessary knowledge and familiarity of seashells and little ocean creatures. She’s never had anyone to talk about this kind of stuff before, and she gets a little embarrassed at one point, asking if she’s boring her -- but Byleth vigorously shakes her head, pointing at more rocks and shells for Edelgard to teach her about.

Edelgard comes to figure out that Byleth doesn’t talk much, but she discovers that Byleth’s way of talking is through something else -- her mixtapes.

When the two of them find time to sit along the beach and watch the sunset over the waters, painting a brilliant gradient of blue and red and orange along the ocean’s surface, Edelgard feels a nudge at her elbow again. When she looks over, Byleth’s holding another cassette tape, Walkman in her hand.

This time, Edelgard hears gentle guitars and soft hums about the sweet tunes of summer. They sit together on the beach, shoulders brushing.

\---

As kids, everything’s an adventure, and Edelgard and Byleth spend their summer embarking on many. They frolick through fields, grinning at each other as they find shapes of animals amongst the clouds. They run across the beach, sand between their toes, earbud in an ear as they listen to a song that makes the sun turn orange, to red. They dart through the narrow streets of the beachside town, ice cream cones in hand as they find a little ledge to sit on and gaze out at the buildings and blue horizon way out below.

Their fathers find their enthusiasm amusing, and they end up driving their daughters out to a little pierside carnival. It’s a long day of cotton candy and hot dogs. When Edelgard fails multiple times at tossing a plastic ring onto a little wooden rod, Byleth steps in and, biting her lip and brow furrowed in concentration, throws the ring — and gets it just right. That’s when Byleth picks out the stuffed animal bear as a reward, and that’s when Edelgard hugs her newfound toy with all her heart, a red blush on her cheeks as she gives thanks to Byleth and her little smile.

On the way back home, on that late evening drive, with the windows rolled down, Edelgard finds her head drooping a little as she fights the urge to sleep — but then she’s startled when Byleth’s head lolls onto her shoulder, her friend already passed out after a long day. A little embarrassed and relieved that Byleth can’t see her blush and smile, Edelgard puts a blanket around them both and takes out Byleth’s Walkman, plugging an earbud in and listening to little upbeat peppy tunes.

—-

The end of summer comes too soon.

Jeralt finishes up his business, and the two friends find themselves standing at the door, only gazing at each other. Edelgard doesn’t cry, because she’s supposed to be strong, so she doesn’t cry, but she feels something stinging at her eyes as she throws her arms out and fiercely hugs Byleth goodbye.

Her best friend does the same, hugging her tight.

Then, in that aching second they pull away, Byleth rummages in her bag and pulls out her Walkman again. Without a word, she holds it out to Edelgard, her face set.

Edelgard makes Byleth promise that she’ll write, that she’ll send more mixtapes. That’s the only way she could take such a precious gift from her greatest friend.

Byleth agrees, giving a little nod. They hug one last time, holding each other so, so tightly, wishing the other wouldn’t let go.

But then Edelgard stands at her doorway and watches Byleth and her father drive away, with only a Walkman and a stuffed teddy bear to remember her friend by. She stands there until she can’t see Byleth staring forlornly out the back window.

—-

They exchange letters for a few years, Byleth sending her mixtapes, and Edelgard sending some too when she finds music that’s outside of Byleth’s preferences of acoustic and alternative. Edelgard meets some goth dude at school named Hubert, who’s pretty cool and has some great rock and punk music, and he’s apparently the son of one of Edelgard’s father’s coworker, so it becomes commonplace for Hubert to come over to her house often. He’s not quite like Byleth, less soft and acoustic but more sharp edged and emo, but Edelgard learns that he’s a good friend in his own way too.

They blast music in Edelgard’s room, teenage rebels rocking out to screamo and metal. Hubert helps Edelgard make her mixtapes to send to Byleth, and he lets her sit on the back of his bike whenever they have to go to the post office to send out another letter to Byleth (sometimes Edelgard sees Hubert panting and huffing really hard to bike them over, but she knows it’ll offend his pride if she asks that they switch so she sits there and watches Hubert struggle to bike them up the hill).

Edelgard eagerly awaits each of Byleth’s letters. Since Byleth had left, she’d traveled with Jeralt as a freelance consultant, having been homeschooled, and the father-daughter duo travel the country to assist fledgeling businesses get up and running. She writes of new sights she’d seen, canyons and forests, massive skyscrapers and lonesome ranches. Then each mixtape she sends has songs from the place she’d visited; sometimes slow-paced country, sometimes fast-paced rap.

Edelgard cherishes each and every mixtape. It’s what helps her escape. Because while Byleth’s and Jeralt’s business life was flourishing, hers...

All the while Edelgard’s growing as a teenager, her father’s business somehow seems to take a dark turn. She hears him arguing in the late night with Hubert’s father and some other men, heated discussions about decisions and policies that she doesn’t quite fully understand just yet, but it strikes a chord of fear in her heart when she sees the toll it all takes from her father. How he seemed to age so much in just a few years, hair turning white.

During those latenight arguments that would echo throughout her house, Edelgard puts in her earbuds and turns on her Walkman, sliding in one of Byleth’s calmer and softer mixtapes. When she closes her eyes, she hears and thinks of happier times.

She doesn’t say in her letters to Byleth what’s happening, though. She wants her time with Byleth to be...her own, untainted, untouched.

—-

Reality hits her, though. And it hits her hard.

Her father’s suddenly ousted from his own company, with Edelgard’s siblings conscripted in to help the new powers seize the Hresvelg operations. Edelgard comes to learn it hadn’t been a voluntary thing, because soon enough she’s dragged into it and placed on a pedestal.

Hubert’s father and some other men tell her she’ll be the new leader — she’s just inheriting her father’s company, as is her right, they tell her. They say her father’s too ill to lead, that her siblings aren’t the right fit to be the head, that she with her strong will had to now learn to oversee an empire. They’d watch over the business in the meantime, until she’s of age, but until then they’d teach her the ropes.

It’s bullshit. Edelgard has enough sense to know that; when she looks around the meeting room, at her frightened siblings’ eyes, the way they cower against the walls, she knows there’s something very, very, wrong. ‘Teach her the ropes’? Edelgard knows they’re set to groom her and make her a puppet, but what can she do, when the livelihoods of all her siblings and her father are at stake?

With no choice, she does as they say. She goes to the elite academic academy they pick out for her, and she begrudgingly learns every facet of operating a massive corporation. Thankfully, Hubert comes with her — when she tries to ask him about the bruises she sees on his cheek, his arms, he shakes his head, teeth gritted. But he’ll be by her side, whatever happens.

That’s when Edelgard begins to plan for a better future.

All the meanwhile, her letters to Byleth maintain a dissonance. That she’s doing fine, that she’s going to a great school, that she’s meeting new people (she is, technically, she meets that one popular school idol girl and her foreign exchange student girlfriend and some other weird folks).

But maybe she doesn’t do as well at hiding her emotions like she’d hoped, because Byleth’s letters come back to her with concern. Somehow through the grapevine, Jeralt and his daughter had heard of their business woes — and now Byleth sends a letter saying she’ll return.

Edelgard holds that letter up so close to her eyes she nearly snaps the paper in half with her clenched hands. Byleth, coming back to her, after so many years. The mixtape in that letter makes Edelgard’s heartache (and her face heat up), because it’s all love songs.

—-

When Byleth takes one step out of the car, Edelgard’s already sprinting from the door of her house. They’re so much older now, taller now, but Edelgard embraces her oldest friend just as she’d done before; as tightly as she could. They hug each other for a long moment, until they break apart and Edelgard looks up into a face that’s familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Byleth. Messy hair, bright eyes. That small, subtle smile.

It’s comforting, and Edelgard feels safe and secure for the first time in a long while when Jeralt gets out of the driver’s seat, jaw set and face determined.

It takes time to wage a war, but that’s what it was when Edelgard and Hubert, along with Jeralt and Byleth, decided to wrest control back of the company. Many legal battles, heated arguments, maybe even some intimidation from Hubert’s side (he’d gone from being a lanky, emo kid to a broad-shouldered, cunning man so Edelgard never questions exactly what his methods are), but they make suitable progress. Somehow some of Edelgard’s and Hubert’s school friends hear of the dark comings and goings, but they choose to stand up and fight too, convincing elders and other figures of power to step in.

With newfound allies, Edelgard slowly but surely makes headway in taking back her true birthright. Now that the pressure of leading was less intense with friends and confidantes to help her stand up to her oppressors, Edelgard finds time to catch up with Byleth.

Like before, they wander along the beach during sunset, feet sinking through the soft sand. Byleth listens with attentive silence as Edelgard truly tells her of all that’s happened since Byleth had left. When Edelgard takes a moment to breathe and calm the rapid, angry beating of her heart when she recounts the day her father had been ousted, she’s startled when she feels Byleth’s hand suddenly hold onto hers.

Without saying anything, Byleth interlaces their fingers together.

Now Edelgard’s heart does a little stutter, and she loses her trail of thought. Byleth, silhouetted by the sunset, outlined in orange, her beautiful face set with a kind of fierceness not unlike the sun, makes a promise to Edelgard then that she’d walk the same path as Edelgard, that she’d stay by her side.

Edelgard doesn’t cry, she doesn’t. But she can’t help but duck forward and press her face into Byleth’s shoulder anyway, her hand tightly holding onto Byleth’s.

—-

Despite the struggles of fighting for her birthright, Edelgard finds pieces of light in her life with Byleth at her side — like before, Byleth becomes a comet, a beacon of joy lighting up the night sky.

They spend time in Edelgard’s bedroom, shoulder to shoulder on her bed, earbuds in each ear as they listen to old mixtapes on that old Walkman and laugh at old memories. Sometimes they take Byleth’s car — really, it was Jeralt’s, a banged up old hunk of metal — and they drive it out to the sea cliffs, just listening to music late, late into the night on the radio or on one of their tapes. At parties — even elite academies have some students willing to let loose — Edelgard’s friend Dorothea lends them a Polaroid camera, and for just those nights, Edelgard and Byleth get some snapshots of themselves giggling and grinning, a little tipsy.

When Byleth goes to drop off Edelgard late one night, Edelgard just asks Byleth to stay with her, rather than driving back home. Edelgard’s face is as hot as the bonfire at the beach party they’d just left, but she stands true to her word.

And just as Byleth had promised before, she does, and Edelgard wakes up the next morning in Byleth’s tender and warm embrace.

—-

It takes more time, but eventually, with the combination of all of Edelgard’s allies’ elite and masterful experience, they manage to legally wrangle control back and oust the corrupt businessmen out of the Hresvelg corporate empire. By Hubert’s hand, the businessmen are all disgraced to hell and back, ensuring that they’ll never touch or harm another business ever again.

They have a massive celebration. Jeralt and some of his own friends who’d chipped in come to the Hresvelg house, along with some of Edeglard’s school friends who’d heard a little of the drama and wanted to help with the festivities. For a long night, Edelgard and Byleth entertain the guests, with Edelgard’s siblings running to and fro to help serve and assist when necessary (and to get a drunken Caspar from doing a barrel roll off the balcony). 

Edelgard’s father even finds enough cheer and energy to at least sit in a chair amongst the guests, recounting stories and folktales of the little beachside town. He’d been sick since the start of all this, despondent and despairing when he saw Edelgard put under so much pressure, but he’d taken comfort in seeing Edelgard and her allies win back what was her own.

Seeing her house filled to the brim with close friends, Edelgard finds herself truly smiling, truly happy, for the first time in a long while. She’d come a long way from being a lonely girl clutching a teddy bear at her chest.

Now Edelgard is here, free from the tyranny of corruption, content and filled with joy.

And she has her greatest friend at her side.

—-

Edelgard finishes out her academy days, graduating with honors and top of her class. Now a fully-fledged adult and of age, she assumes control of her father’s business. It goes without saying that Byleth and Hubert are her right and left hands, and they deftly assume their tasks and duties with skill and speed. Jeralt, getting along with age, takes to retirement, letting the younger generation take the reins and he spends his days with Edelgard’s father, the two of them drinking and fishing by the ocean.

When they’re not working though, Edelgard and Byleth find time to make the world their own again.

Walks on the beach. Strolls through the town. Drives along the coast.

They hold hands all the way.

One night, Byleth drives them out to an open field, and they lie down on the hood of the car, gazing up at the twinkling stars way on high. An earbud in each of their ears, Edelgard presses the play button on the Walkman, and for a long time, they lie there and listen to music that’s tied them together since they were kids. Edelgard had compiled a mixtape of all their favorite tunes, but she’d left a new song for the end, one that she’d found with Dorothea’s and Hubert’s help.

When they reach the beginning chords of that last song, Edelgard’s heart is stuttering in her chest, the butterflies in her stomach making her feel like a kid all over again.

It’s another love song. One about confessing, about having always loved for so long. Dorothea had helped write the lyrics and helped her practice it, and Hubert had done the instrumentals. It’d taken time to learn how to sing, but Edelgard had done it anyway, just for this moment.

It’s a song straight from Edelgard’s heart, and she finds her embarrassment rising up enough that her face begins to burn again, and she sits up, unable to find the courage to see Byleth’s face—

But then she feels Byleth sitting up next to her, and as the song comes to a close, Edelgard looks at the tips of her shoes, not sure of where to look until she feels a gentle hand on her chin.

Byleth gently tugs Edelgard around to look at her, and Edelgard finds Byleth with the most tender, sweetest expression, that soft smile on her face — the one that Edelgard has come to fall in love with over all these years.

Byleth leans in a little, just as Edelgard does, and it takes them a few seconds to close the distance, the both of them silently asking for permission as they look at each other’s vulnerable faces — but when they kiss, it’s like Edelgard’s heart grows tenfold.

Kissing Byleth was like kissing a sunrise, warmth settling over her and every part of her body, the cool air of the night fading away as she felt the light of dawn at the tips of her fingertips; when Edelgard reaches her own hand up to cup Byleth’s cheek so she could kiss her again, she finds herself smiling into Byleth’s lips and feeling Byleth do the same.

**Author's Note:**

> I was a little worried things might seem OOC in this b/c :thonk: it's hard for me sometimes to take characters from a medieval fantasy setting and throw them into a modern one so if there's slight weird plotholes YES THERE ARE i admit it LOL gomen i just wanted soft gays
> 
> i also laugh at like. dinky lanky hubert goth kid and edelgard being into screamo/metal ... they just strike me as that kind of pair LOL and also  
broke: dorothea famous singer  
woke: garreg mach love live school idol au dorothea tries to save her closing school by gathering 9 girls to sing and dance
> 
> anyway, here's wonderwall
> 
> social media:  
@thehaakun on twitter  
@thehaakun on tumblr


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